Portal: We'll Remember This
by iammemyself
Summary: It's sixty years after Chell has left, and a lot has changed. With the return of her former test subject, GLaDOS discovers that even she will never know everything. Refers to events during Love as a Construct, but it is not required reading.


We'll Remember This

Indiana

**Characters: GLaDOS, Chell, Wheatley (mentioned)**

**Setting: Post Portal 2 (takes place after ****_Love as a Construct_****)**

Time had been kind to GLaDOS.

She looked languidly around her chamber, which was perhaps not quite as nice as it had once been, but that didn't matter. As long as she was happy there, it served its purpose.

And she was.

Once fanatically desperate to further the cause of Science, the supercomputer had devoted all of her self and all of her considerable resources into achieving that goal. But one day, during an incident that had left her all but disabled, with one of her processors an unusable piece of circuitry uselessly fused to her motherboard, she had asked herself:

Why?

She enjoyed Science. She had always enjoyed it, regardless of the scientist's influence on her in the beginning. The thrill of discovery, the anticipation of calculation, the power in designing some new experiment… Even now, when she no longer threw herself into such things as she once had, the familiar rush rose up inside her, and she yearned to undertake something new. But on that day, when she had had no other recourse except to take a good, firm look at herself and what she was doing with her life, she discovered just what she was really doing:

Looking for answers.

She had searched for answers to questions she hadn't known she was asking, and she knew as well as anyone that questions that remained unasked remained unanswered. She had to ask the _real_ question, the _hard_ question, so that she could stop looking. The thought of forever searching for something bothered her terribly for some reason. And after a period of thought, she had decided on her question:

What do I want?

Almost immediately after asking herself this question, she knew that it was the correct one. And she _did_ enjoy Science, and she _did_ want to do it, but she had a feeling deep in her core that it was not what she was looking for. No, she knew what she wanted, and she had wanted it for so very long, but she was so afraid to admit it to herself. She was so afraid of becoming dependent. On her own, nobody could hurt her. On her own, she was safe. If she didn't let anybody in, she kept herself entirely out of harm's way. But she realised that by doing this, by protecting herself by remaining inside her defensive shell, she was keeping herself small. She wasn't allowing herself to grow. To be all that she could be.

And that was intolerable.

On that day, she had made the decision to change her life. It had been difficult, and the change had not come all at once, but it had been worth it. She nodded to herself. Oh yes, it had been worth it. It had been far more rewarding than any endeavour of Science had ever been, and it had even managed to make the Science all the more enjoyable.

And so GLaDOS had spent many years in which little or no Science had been done at all, where she merely lived and took pleasure in doing so, and though at times she found herself wondering what the purpose in such behaviour was, she managed to shrug it off. There was a certain satisfaction in living just because she could. Doing nothing else, and just living, and enjoying it.

"It's been a long time."

GLaDOS did not look for the speaker. She had already known she was coming. Had almost invited her, but somehow could not quite bring herself to do so. No matter how satisfied she was with her life and with her past, there was still a cold worm of discomfort in her brain that fought against speaking to the woman who had seen more about the supercomputer in one day than anyone else had in a lifetime.

"You couldn't come up with something original to say?" GLaDOS remarked lightly. "You had to repeat what I once said?"

The woman came into GLaDOS's field of vision then, and she was taken aback by what she saw. In her mind's eye, although it was impossible, she had always seen her young and vital, doing whatever things it was humans did in their free time. Never had she imagined her test subject's body to have shrunk with age, for her skin to be rough with disuse, for her hair to be more grey than brown. In fact, the only reason GLaDOS was sure it was her was her eyes. They were still set the in the same slate grey, determined stare as they had been all those years ago, and GLaDOS felt oddly comforted that life on the outside had not softened her little lunatic. The lunatic in question shrugged.

"I thought you'd appreciate the sentiment."

Slowly, making sure to balance herself evenly as she did so, Chell sat on the cold, black tiles of GLaDOS's chamber and squinted up at her. "You did _not_ age well," she said bluntly.

"I wouldn't insult me, if I were you," GLaDOS told her, not really meaning too much by it. She very rarely attempted to take a look at her chassis, but she knew exactly what was happening to it. She could feel the metal growing brittle with rust, the mechanisms straining to complete the simplest of tasks, the wires wearing through with the slightest of movements. She did not move very much anymore. For one thing, she wasn't sure how much motion she had left in her; even refocusing her lens was a chore, sometimes. For another, it hurt. Pain had not bothered her so much in the past, and didn't really do so now, but pain coupled with the fact that using up any movements she had left was probably not to her advantage, well, that was another issue entirely. And for yet another, movement was used to express oneself, and she didn't really need to do that anymore.

"Oh, I know I didn't," Chell told her. "You know… I never expected this. I kinda thought… well, that you'd look like you did when you let me go."

"I thought the same of you. Even though it made no logical sense."

Chell grinned. "Aw, you thought about me. I'm touched."

"Why did you come?" GLaDOS asked. She was a little more comfortable, now that she was here, but she was not sure how long the feeling would last and wanted to get to the core of the visit, as it were.

Chell wrung her hands together. "I wanted to… apologise."

GLaDOS was taken aback, and immediately regretted her physical reaction, which was accompanied by a grating screech and the groaning of tortured metal. Chell stared at her.

"You… you really are worse off than I'd ever expected."

"I'm fine," GLaDOS said shortly. She didn't really want to get into a discussion about how decrepit she was becoming. "Why would you want to – "

"Does it hurt?"

God, she was even more persistent when she talked. "Yes. A little. Not enough to bother me."

Chell clenched a fist. "You didn't even get out of that."

"I have no idea what you're alluding to."

"Like I said, I came here to apologise," Chell continued, not looking at GLaDOS. "Not for anything _I_ did. I don't regret anything I did. Mostly."

"So what would you possibly have to apologise for?"

"What _they_ did."

"What _who_ did?" GLaDOS asked, exasperated. "I suppose it would kill you to be more specific."

"The scientists," Chell answered. GLaDOS's processes froze for a few seconds.

She hadn't thought about that in a long time.

"What does that have to do with you?" GLaDOS asked dully, not for the first time regretting her brain's ability to access information within a fraction of an instant.

"You never got to see how _good_ people can be," Chell explained. "I'm sure you know just what you sent me out into."

"Of course."

"When there's nothing left, all you have left is the people you're with," Chell said quietly. "You can choose to stay back, and not trust them, but… it doesn't get you anywhere. It only poisons you inside." She looked up, mouth twisted in a grimace. "I learned that from you, by the way."

"Typical of you to take the one lesson away from all of that that I _wasn't_ trying to teach you."

Chell shrugged. "I just… I thought about you a lot."

"No doubt you thought about how you could throw away all of the skills you acquired while you were here."

"I became well-versed in the art of sarcasm, that's for sure." She grinned up at GLaDOS again. "_Bad_ sarcasm."

GLaDOS shook her head a little. "Ingrate."

Chell stuck out her tongue. "I wouldn't want to disappoint you."

"You never did," GLaDOS said softly, not really intending to, and Chell smiled and looked away from her for a minute.

"I always knew there was more to you," she said finally.

"How clever of you."

Slowly, in short, hesitant sentences, Chell began to tell GLaDOS of her life on the outside. Always eager to hear new information, the supercomputer listened intently, resolving to keep any comments to a minimum. Chell didn't have to do this, didn't have to be here at all, and GLaDOS was far more grateful for her company than she would ever dare admit. It had been far too quiet in her chamber for far too long.

Chell told her of walking away from Aperture, of doing her best to transport the Cube but abandoning it after a few days; she hadn't seen much use for it and, other than sentimental value, it wasn't worth anything.

She had walked on and on for days, stubbornly resolving to find somewhere to go no matter how long it took, but she had to admit that not having eaten or drunk anything for literally years made it very, very difficult. It was a hot, arduous walk, and several times Chell found herself getting lost in hallucinations, or flat on the ground, not moving at all. But she was determined to press on and make it, if only to spite the AI that had thrown her into this wilderness in the first place. "After all, you didn't expect me to live, did you?" Chell asked. "The best way to get back at you was to keep going, no matter what."

"I never know what to expect, with you," GLaDOS admitted. "All I wanted was to shut Caroline up. Kicking you out and accompanying your eviction with a sappy farewell speech was the best way to do it, the song notwithstanding."

Chell laughed and continued.

After a very, very long time, Chell eventually found a small, abandoned village. She didn't find any humans, or any food, but she did find a few items called 'medkits', as well as an old revolver and the appropriate ammunition. She rested there a few days, hoping someone would show up, but no one ever did. Taking a couple of the medkits and the gun, Chell set out once more.

Eventually Chell did meet up with some humans, and they took her to one of their outposts. Chell claimed amnesia and told them she didn't remember where she'd come from, "and really," Chell shrugged, "who would've believed me if I'd said a homicidal, sentient AI had forced me to leave her crazy laboratory?"

"I would," GLaDOS protested.

"Only you," Chell laughed.

After successfully fighting off the Combine with the help of a theoretical physicist from Black Mesa, Chell and the humans began to colonise one of the areas left less desolate than the others. Together, they built a small farm and cultivated it as a community. After a few years there, Chell met and married a man every bit as stubborn as she was, and the two of them had a pair of little boys who grew into strong, immovable young men. "They're both married with a couple kids of their own now," Chell remarked to GLaDOS, a bit wistfully. "Time goes by so fast, y'know? I thought they'd be kids forever, but… they grew up."

Chell told GLaDOS of the way they had banded together to make things work, of sharing what little they had when they saw that others had less, of finding much more happiness and contentment with this new life that they had fought for than for any life they had had before the Seven Hour War. And she told GLaDOS hesitantly of the man she had married, of the things he had taught her and she him, and GLaDOS listened.

"That was something I thought about, a lot," Chell admitted. "It made me sad, to think that you'd never find someone like that."

"Like what?"

"Someone who… who cared about you for you."

"I had someone like that," GLaDOS said softly, because of all the things it hurt to think about, this hurt most of all. "But he's… he's gone now."

"You did?" Chell asked in surprise. "Who was he? He couldn't have been human, could he?"

"Of course not," GLaDOS snapped. "He was better than that. Obviously."

"Tell me about him," Chell said gently, and GLaDOS had to look away from her then.

"I… don't know if I can," GLaDOS admitted. "It's hard to think about."

"You can do it. C'mon, I wanna hear about the guy who wore you down."

"It was Wheatley," GLaDOS told her, hoping that would be enough to appease her. Chell's eyes grew wide.

"_Wheatley_?" she gasped. "You _forgave_ him?"

"He was only doing what it was in his nature to do," GLaDOS argued. "I would have done the same thing. And you're here, aren't you?"

"But you're so stubborn!"

GLaDOS supposed she was going to have to give the lunatic the long version after all.

She told Chell of the archive she had created when he had been stripped of his status as the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, of rediscovering it and wanting to rekindle what she had lost. She told her of bringing him back, and of the long, sometimes painful process of struggling to put her true self in the trust of someone else. She told her of watching him grow into someone entirely new, someone he'd never been meant to be, and, somewhat more hesitantly, of her pride in him for doing it. She told her of discovering the joy in doing something for someone else, in _caring_ for someone else. She told her of the mistakes she had made that she had fully expected to push him away, but had only drawn him closer. She told Chell of the things he had taught her, and she him, and Chell listened.

"You said he was gone," Chell said quietly.

"That's… a story for another time, I think," GLaDOS said. "I don't like thinking about it."

"I wish he was still here," Chell murmured. "I would've liked to know what he would have said about you."

GLaDOS could have told Chell, could have listed every single thing Wheatley had ever said about her in their time together, but not only did it hurt just to think about it, but she was afraid. Afraid that if she shared him with Chell, she would lose a piece of him, somehow, even though in her case, remembering would not change the memory. So she said instead, in a voice she could barely hear, "I miss him."

"I can't imagine what it must be like," Chell said softly, her face creased in sadness, "dealing with that by yourself."

"There was… someone else," GLaDOS admitted, having kept _that_ part out of the story, "but I sent them away."

Chell looked shocked, which puzzled GLaDOS. "But… why would you send them away, after… after learning all that stuff?"

"I have to stay here. They did not. So I sent them away."

"And they didn't come back?"

"Not yet," GLaDOS answered. "I don't expect them to for, oh… another sixty years."

Chell snorted. "That was low."

GLaDOS shook her head in mock sadness, glad to get off the topic of Wheatley. "You're the one who did it."

"Because you had no idea where I was or how to contact me."

"Come on. Am I really the type of person that would do that?"

Chell spread her hands. "That's why I'm here."

"Because you were bored?"

"Something like that."

Chell fidgeted for a few moments, twisting her fingers together, then looked up. "Can I ask you something?"

"Other than that? Go ahead."

"Can I bring my husband here to meet you?"

GLaDOS was taken aback, but managed to suppress the physical reaction, this time. "Why would he want to do that?"

"He knows what you are, you know."

"That's not the problem. The problem is whether he believes it or not. Very few people ever did."

Chell frowned. "You think he doesn't trust me?"

GLaDOS shook her head. "It's not that. Accepting what I am takes a good measure of faith, a faith that most people do not exhibit."

"Ahhh. Say no more," Chell said with a knowing smile GLaDOS didn't much like. "You don't want to take the chance."

There really was no point in trying to fight it. "That's right," GLaDOS said reluctantly. "Wheatley was one thing. An unknown human… that might be beyond me."

"You don't trust them."

"Would you? What good ever came of a computer that trusted a human?"

"He's with me. You'll be fine."

That was true. He was someone Chell trusted, probably more than anyone else in the world. "Fine," she agreed half-heartedly. "As long as he doesn't stare at me. I hate it when people do that."

Chell held up a hand in mock salute. "No staring. Got it." She bunched up her shoulders a little. "Speaking of him… I should probably get going. I've been here a long time."

"Off you go, then."

Chell stood up slowly, and GLaDOS looked away. She didn't much like the sounds coming from her test subject's body, indicating that she was every bit as worn out as GLaDOS herself was. She had never wanted to think of her that way.

"When I got here," Chell said, "I told you that I didn't regret most of the things I did while I was here."

"Yes."

"I am sorry for one thing," she went on. She hesitated a long moment.

"I'm sorry for not coming back sooner."

GLaDOS was unable not to react physically this time, and Chell winced. "Why would you say that?" GLaDOS said quickly, not wanting to think too long about the unpleasant ringing spreading through her chassis.

"The whole foundation of your world was shaken that day," Chell explained. "I should have stayed. I should have helped you… sort through it all. I should have realised that you did everything that you did because you didn't know any better. But I didn't.

"I should have come back anytime in all these years, and seen how you were doing, how you'd moved on with all that knowledge. But things kept happening, and I kept telling myself, next year, I'll do it next year. But next year never came."

"Until now."

"Until now," Chell agreed. "It's not too late, is it?"

"I'll think about it," GLaDOS said noncommittally. Chell snorted.

"I can't believe someone actually _married_ you."

"We did not get _married_," GLaDOS said in disgust. "Marriage is a stupid human tradition."

"It's not stupid," Chell protested, frowning.

"Divorce rates alone indicate how stupid it is."

"People don't get divorced anymore. Shows what you know."

"You don't happen to live in the most developed part of the world, you know."

Chell froze. "You really do know where I live?"

"Of course," GLaDOS said airily. "All of the satellites in orbit are still completely operational."

"With some help from you, no doubt."

GLaDOS knew that statement needed no answer, and merely continued to watch Chell. Chell nodded once and turned, beginning the walk towards the elevator that would return her to the surface, to her ramshackle little vehicle that would take her back home. Once she got there, she hesitated.

"Remember when the platform was sliding into the firepit, and you said, 'Goodbye' and I was like, 'No way', and then you were all, 'We pretended we were going to murder you'?"

GLaDOS stared at her. She did so for so long that Chell's eyebrows came together. "What?" she asked, frowning.

"Did I really say that?"

"Yeah," Chell said. "You said it exactly like that."

"You're kidding me."

"How can you not remember that? I think about it all the time!"

Now that she bothered to look it up, GLaDOS did, in fact, remember, but she still couldn't quite bring herself to believe she'd ever said such a thing. "You think about it all the time?"

"Because it's so ridiculous."

It _was_ pretty ridiculous, and the more she thought about it, the funnier it became. GLaDOS could not help but laugh at the clueless desperation of her younger self, and Chell started to laugh as well. It was such a stupid and silly thing to have said that GLaDOS could not stop laughing. And neither could Chell, it seemed.

After a minute or so, Chell wiped her eyes and smiled at GLaDOS. "I really do have to go."

"Stop taking your time, then."

Chell stepped into the elevator, giving her a short wave. "I'll be back soon."

"Sixty years is not soon."

Chell rolled her eyes. "It's not going to take me sixty years."

"Debateable."

GLaDOS watched as the elevator rose, taking her lunatic out of her facility, and found herself hoping she really _would_ be back soon. It had been nice to talk to someone again. GLaDOS had not done so in years, not since…

Well… maybe she _should_ make an attempt at contact. If Chell regretted leaving, which actually amounted to regretting GLaDOS sending her away, then maybe _they_ wished they were still here, but was too stubborn to admit it. As GLaDOS herself would have been.

It was kind of funny, really, GLaDOS thought as she considered whether she should go ahead with it or not, that even after all these years, she still had so much to learn. Did one ever stop learning? Or was the notion that knowledge was infinite a true one, and not just some human ridiculousness borne of their restricted lifespan? After a minute of deliberation, she concluded that she didn't know.

But she could not wait to find out.

**Author's note**

**In all honesty, I probably shouldn't be releasing this yet. It refers to a lot of things that haven't been determined yet, and I wrote it all in one go, but I'll go ahead and do it and see what happens.**

**So this story takes place sixty years after Chell leaves. It also takes place after ****_Love as a Construct_****, which is not necessary reading because I summarise what you need to know. Wheatley has died and GLaDOS has sent their AI child away; I didn't say too much about either because I don't actually know what happened to Wheatley and I don't want to say anything about their kid yet because I don't know anything about it. I imagine that the kid wouldn't talk to her anymore because they were so annoyed that she'd made them leave. So GLaDOS is alone in Aperture. Basically she's in limbo. She can't do that much anymore, because she's ancient, and she thinks she's learned all there is to learn about relationships. Chell comes in and reminds her that she still has a lot to figure out, but that as long as she's willing to cooperate, she'll never truly be alone. By coming back to Aperture and giving GLaDOS her trust, GLaDOS knows that the only way to keep growing is to do the same.**


End file.
